I've been thinking about your post. When I became involved 30 years ago, there was no such thing as MMA or even a complete self defense system. The though process of the day was that (fill in martial art style here) is the best way to defend yourself and all other forms of self defense were crap. Over the last three decades, the "self defense" aspec of martial arts has been replaced with a competitive fighting system that samples from any discipline that it feels can accomplish the goal of winning a competition fight. The downside of this trend has been an extream softening the discipline and hierarchy of the dojo/dojang/gym. This lack of discipline may be producing people who can competitively fight but it is doing nothing for character developement or for the progression of good vs. evil in our society.